Yesterday, Paris socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo threatened to cancel the NYANSAPO Festival, a European Afrofeminist event, and threatened to pursue its organisers, MWASI Collective, for ‘anti-white’ discrimination, because the festival enforces a safe space policy and 80% of its events are open only to black women and women of colour. This is the latest in a series of attacks against anti-racist feminist groups dedicated to intersectional organising and practice by alt-right trolls, but more alarmingly by the purportedly ‘left wing’ establishment.

Safe spaces for women of colour are seen as dangerous and a threat to the unity (or whiteness) of the French Republic, but for FLY and MWASI, they are the central site of our feminist activism and solidarity. To accuse safe space policies and events open only to black women and women of colour of being ‘anti-white’ or ‘racist against white people’ is to centre whiteness in anti-racist organising. This constitutes an instance of institutional racism. In France, feminist organising and institutional anti-racism haven’t been decolonised, and groups like MWASI do the invaluable work of amplifying the voices of black women and women of colour, raising awareness of and fighting systemic police brutality, and celebrating and continuing the legacy of black feminists and women. This is why FLY Cambridge, the network and forum for women and non-binary students of colour at Cambridge, stands firmly in solidarity with MWASI Collective, and celebrates the critical and indispensable work done by our sisters in their struggle for self-emancipation and self-determination. FLY offers its solidarity to MWASI because we believe in the importance of solidarity networks that transcend national boundaries, and believe in the inherent value of extending our support to organisations that centre the voices of the most marginalised.